Sugar Feeds Cancer

I've previously posted on this, one post you should definitely read. Via a comment on Art's private blog, I see even more evidence that that ingesting sugar (including too much grain and/or fruit / juice) in the presence of cancer kills people a lot faster. Read what Patrick Quillin, PHD, RD, CNS has to say.

A mouse model of human breast cancer demonstrated that tumors are sensitive to blood-glucose levels. Sixty-eight mice were injected with an aggressive strain of breast cancer, then fed diets to induce either high blood-sugar (hyperglycemia), normoglycemia or low blood-sugar (hypoglycemia). There was a dose-dependent response in which the lower the blood glucose, the greater the survival rate. After 70 days, 8 of 24 hyperglycemic mice survived compared to 16 of 24 normoglycemic and 19 of 20 hypoglycemic. This suggests that regulating sugar intake is key to slowing breast tumor growth.

In a human study, 10 healthy people were assessed for fasting blood-glucose levels and the phagocytic index of neutrophils, which measures immune-cell ability to envelop and destroy invaders such as cancer. Eating 100 g carbohydrates from glucose, sucrose, honey and orange juice all significantly decreased the capacity of neutrophils to engulf bacteria. Starch did not have this effect.

A four-year study at the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection in the Netherlands compared 111 biliary tract cancer patients with 480 controls. Cancer risk associated with the intake of sugars, independent of other energy sources, more than doubled for the cancer patients. Furthermore, an epidemiological study in 21 modern countries that keep track of morbidity and mortality (Europe, North America, Japan and others) revealed that sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to higher breast cancer rates, particularly in older women.

If I had to speculate, it would be that cancer is brought about by unnatural foods in our diets (grains & vegetable oils, primarily) that generate and promote chronic inflammation and this inflammation, in-turn, causes cancer. And, once that job is complete, sugar takes right over to feed that cancer.

Wanna read something really dumb, then, continuing with Quillin?

In 1990, I called the major cancer hospitals in the country looking for some information on the crucial role of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) in cancer patients. Some 40 percent of cancer patients die from cachexia.5 Yet many starving cancer patients are offered either no nutritional support or the standard TPN solution developed for intensive care units. The solution provides 70 percent of the calories going into the bloodstream in the form of glucose. All too often, I believe, these high-glucose solutions for cachectic cancer patients do not help as much as would TPN solutions with lower levels of glucose and higher levels of amino acids and lipids. These solutions would allow the patient to build strength and would not feed the tumor.

Good job, folks. Give them intravenous nutrition, 70% of which is the primary fuel for cancer cells, a medical fact know since 1931 -- a discovery by Otto Warburg that earned him a Nobel prize in medicine.

Oh, well, even though high fat-eating gunter-gatherers don't get cancer, we certainly couldn't feed cancer patients high fat.

Finally, if you read that previous post of mine that I highlighted at the beginning of this post, then you are aware of the anecdote of a man putting his metasticized lung cancer into remission via a high-fat diet a-la Jan Kwasniewski ( see here, too ). Well, Dr. Quillan has another similar one.

A female patient in her 50s, with lung cancer, came to our clinic, having been given a death sentence by her Florida oncologist. She was cooperative and understood the connection between nutrition and cancer. She changed her diet considerably, leaving out 90 percent of the sugar she used to eat. She found that wheat bread and oat cereal now had their own wild sweetness, even without added sugar. With appropriately restrained medical therapy -- including high-dose radiation targeted to tumor sites and fractionated chemotherapy, a technique that distributes the normal one large weekly chemo dose into a 60-hour infusion lasting days -- a good attitude and an optimal nutrition program, she beat her terminal lung cancer. I saw her the other day, five years later and still disease-free, probably looking better than the doctor who told her there was no hope.

Now, if all this is true, and we know what other bad things sugar does -- like making you fat & diabetic -- then why in the world would you want to touch it in any significant way?

Oh, and by the way, can you guess the other thing we talk about here a lot that actually protects you should you get cancer and require chemotherepy? ( hint: it starts with an 'f' )